I recently bought a netbook, an Asus EEE PC. I have enjoyed the portability and usefullness of this little laptop so far, but getting used to the smaller 1024×600 screen resolution took a little getting used to. The smaller screen size has been most noticeable while web browsing.
Because of the smaller screen size, there is a much smaller viewing area when surfing the web. I’m always looking for ways to improve things, so I didn’t wait long to start changing how things worked on my netbook. Here are some before and after shots showing the changes I made and the gain in screen space.
Click image for a larger view
Click image for a larger view
The most direct method of increasing the viewable screen space on Firefox is to get rid of any unnecessary toolbars. For my purposes, I have removed the status bar, the tab bar, and I combined the bookmark toolbar with the menu toolbar. This whole process took less than two minutes and increased the amount of valuable screen real estate on my netbook.
Remove the Firefox status bar
To accomplish this simple step just click on “View” in the menu bar and uncheck “Status Bar”. Immediately after doing this you will notice that the toolbar running across the bottom of your browser disappears.
Uncheck this option
Remove the tab bar
When only one tab is opened in Firefox I don’t see the point in having the tab toolbar taking up space on the screen. You can remove the tab bar from always showing by navigating to “Options” then “Tabs” and unchecking the “Always show the tab bar” option.
Uncheck this option
Move the bookmarks toolbar to the top
I could have just removed the bookmarks toolbar in Firefox, but I prefer to keep it around for quick access to sites that I frequently go to. Instead of removing it, I minimized it and combined my bookmarks with my menu toolbar.
To do this, first right-click on your menu toolbar (the area where it says “File”, “Edit”,“View”, etc.) and select “Customize”
A little option window will then popup and all your bookmarks located in the bookmarks toolbar will be condensed into one icon. Drag this icon to the end of your menu toolbar.
Click image for larger view
If you have a lot of bookmarks on your toolbar like I do, then minimizing what is shown may be helpful. I removed the text name of my bookmarks, leaving only the favicon of the website showing. The favicon for my bookmarks is enough of an indicator for me to separate them.
To remove or modify the text name/description of bookmarks in the bookmarks tab, right-click the one you want and select “Properties”.
In the Properties area I removed all the text in the “Name” field and left that area blank. Doing this leaves only the favicon in place. I went through and removed all the name fields for my individual bookmarks, and by doing this, was able to fit all my bookmarks easily to the right of the menu toolbar.
Anyone using a netbook or other small screen device can gain from following these steps to increase their screen space in Firefox. If you have taken steps to increase the viewing area of your browser, what kinds of things have you done
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Nice share here Rob, me always do this, but of course many people i believe need to pay attention to it, coz i still see some of my friends opening bookmarks on his browser, in fact they don’t need that, and i always give them a hand to disable it…